Monday, 25 February 2013

Last week I did a sort of lecture at City University London
for the students on their Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership
degree course. I was founding director there of the Centre for Creativity – and
the MICL (as in “Taking the MICL”) was and is the best fruit from that time.

In reality the “lecture” took the form of a conversation
between Marshall Marcus and myself (and the students), and Marshall talked
about El Sistema, the project in Venezuela where kids from all backgrounds get
involved in playing music in orchestras.

In Venezuela there are now 400,000 children participating,
and there are El Sistema-style projects flowering around the world.

“Usually, kids who start to play instruments first spend
several years learning before they think about joining an orchestra,” said
Marshall. “But in El Sistema they join an orchestra at the beginning and,
through that involvement, start the journey of learning how to play.”

Friday, 22 February 2013

I was facilitating a workshop with a group of Louis Vuitton
managers and we were exploring together what works well and what does not in the company.

In an organisation that they were generally thrilled to be part
of, top of the “what doesn’t work well here” list was
communication. “Nobody tells you anything around here,” said one. “I always
seem to be the last to know,” said another.

Then we did some sorting of the team into personality types and,
surprise-surprise, none of them were “bards”. None saw themselves as
strong communicators and none saw any of their colleagues as effective in that area.

Eureka! They all seemed to grasp at the same moment that the
problem was not them, but us. And, actually, not us but ME.

So what to do about it? The first solution usually proposed
in this situation is to develop a new internal newsletter. It’s never the
answer.

A few of the Louis Vuitton people decided that they could
and would change their behaviour. And others decided to start hiring people who
were strong bards.

Saturday, 16 February 2013

Yesterday I went walkabout in the leafy inner-city suburb of
St John’s Wood ‒ in
search of the homes of artistic Aussies and New Zealanders who came to better
themselves (or so they imagined) in fin-de-siècle London.

It’s an area that young Australasian artists, writers and
musicians could probably only consider walking through nowadays, perhaps to a
cricket match, property values having rocketed there during the twentieth
century.Australasians have traditionally lived in close proximity in
London in order to network with each other. In the mid-twentieth century, it
was primarily in Earl’s Court (or “Kangaroo Valley” as it came to be known).
More recently the suburbs of choice have been more diffusely spread across west
London – from Neasden to Clapham ‒ the need perhaps substantially replaced now
by Facebook.

Throughout the nineteenth century St John’s Wood attracted
the artistic, notable inhabitants including the writers George Eliot and George
du Maurier, fashionable artists Sir Edwin Landseer, Laurence Alma-Tadema and
James Jacques Joseph Tissot, composers William Sterndale Bennett and William
Wallace, with singers including Manuel Garcia II and his sister Maria Malibran.
Through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it was a convenient
place for mistresses and courtesans, including Mrs Fitzherbert, wife of the
Prince Regent, and Jane Belmont, mistress of George IV.

The suburb had sufficient social and/or political clout by
the end of the nineteenth century that the Great Central Railway was forced, at
great expense, to tunnel its way south from the Finchley Road to its new London
terminus, Marylebone Station, leaving the leafy charms of St John’s Wood
untouched.

Whose homes did I find?

Much the most exciting was the discovery that 87a Clifton
Hill, where the Australian sculptor Bertram Mackennal (later Sir Bertram, he
was the first Australian artist to be knighted) lived and worked with his
family for ten years from 1894, is not on the road, but set back behind No 87
down an alleyway ‒ a
real studio house. I rang the bell, but nobody was home, so I’ll have to go
back another time to see if I can get a look around. Just three doors away was
the studio of another important sculptor, Sir William Reid Dick. For some
reason Reid Dick has a Blue Plaque, while Mackennal has none. In 1904 Mackennal
moved a short distance to more salubrious accommodation in Marlborough Hill.

At 10 Hill Road lived Arthur Streeton and his new wife, the
Canadian violinist Nora Clench, a house which “though ordinary-looking outside,
is delightfully artistic inside,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald in
1910.

It seems that Durham House in Langford Place, the home of the
great contralto Ada Crossley, has been demolished, but, judging by others in
the street, it must have been a fine property, a magnet for visiting
Australians.

A pair of brothers from Wellington, Arnold and Garnet
Trowell (cellist and violinist respectively), lived with their parents at 52 Carlton
Hill. While Arnold became a leading player in his generation, both brothers are
best remembered now as beloved by another young New Zealander, Katherine
Mansfield, who was to become perhaps the greatest writer of short stories in
English in the twentieth century. Katherine became infatuated with Arnold
first, then, when he did not reciprocate, with Garnet, with whom she became
pregnant in 1908/09. She lived with the Garnets for a while in Carlton Hill.

On the edge of St John’s Wood at 11 Boundary Road, with what
must have been fine country views to the north, lived the Australian portrait
photographer, H Walter Barnett. He moved to set up in London (from Sydney) in 1898,
where he quickly established himself as a leader in the field, Australia’s
first world-class photographer.

Friday, 8 February 2013

I was shopping yesterday in the supermarket and, walking down the
confectionery isle, looking for what my ten year old might enjoy, I stopped
dead in front of a fairly recent new product ‒ Rowntree’s Pick & Mix.

It’s not that it’s such a radical innovation. In fact it’s a
perfectly obvious one, given that the company produces Fruit Gums, Fruit
Pastilles, Jellytots, Tooty Frooties etc.

The reason that I stopped in my tracks was the realisation
that this was an idea that I’d vigorously proposed to the company nearly forty
years ago. I thought it was a no-brainer then. But they didn’t.

Were they right? I doubt it. By now they could have had four
decades-worth of building a decent brand, with all the attendant sales and
profit.

Tuesday, 5 February 2013

I’ve been thinking about the important role that
masterclasses have played in my life.

The first I ever attended was in 1973 (and, yes, that’s
forty years ago), where the eminent pianist Alfred Brendel worked with half a
dozen young musicians, helping them to re-think the way they approached and
played Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert. In fact that was the first of a series of
six classes I went to that week, each three hours long and conducted by Brendel.

But, aside from the effect on the students, Brendel enabled
me personally, just one of the audience, not only to open my ears to music in
new ways, but also to think about how teaching works – what enables change and
what creates barriers. Much of that has stayed with me ever since.

What prompted these reflections was the all-Schubert concert
given by Imogen Cooper in the Auditorium of St John’s College, Oxford, on Saturday,
the first fruit of her new appointment as Humanitas Visiting Professor.

What a fine player she has become since being one of those
six budding young pianists four decades ago.

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Welcome

When I started this blog, the posts were mainly about innovation, creativity and leadership matters. So if you want the see those, they are mostly in the earlier years. More recently I've been writing about the arts - music, literature and art itself. I still post from time to time on innovation matters and indeed anything else that intrigues me.

About Me

Roger Neill FRSA, FIoD, is Managing Partner of the innovation consultancy, Per Diem. He was Founding Director of the Centre for Creativity, City University London, and international managing partner for Synectics Corporation, a world leader in innovation and creativity. He writes, speaks and conducts masterclasses and workshops around the world.
Previously Roger worked in marketing communications. For ten years he was with Saatchi & Saatchi and was appointed to the board of directors aged 27. With Lintas (now Lowe) he became chairman in Australia/New Zealand and regional director for Asia/Pacific. He was deputy chairman of WCRS Worldwide in London. Roger was World President of the International Advertising Association 1990-1992.
An expert on the innovators, artists, writers and musicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he helped Sam Wanamaker to re-build Shakespeare's Globe in London. He curated the exhibition Legends: The Art of Walter Barnett for the National Portrait Gallery in Australia. Roger was founder of Sinfonia 21 and chairman of Endymion Ensemble. He started his working life as a professional rock musician.